Financial Crisis Hits U.S. Health Care

NEW YORK — The current financial turbulence has taken a casualty in the U.S. health care industry.

Sources in Jefferson County, Ala., tell Newsmax that the giant pharmaceutical vaccine company Solvay has ditched its plans to build a major facility in the Birmingham area. Despite a series of tax breaks approved Tuesday, the Brussels-based drug company decided to shelve the $400-million U.S. project.

Solvay is the world's largest manufacturer of influenza vaccine. It employs more than 10,000 people globally with annual sales of almost $4 billion. The Birmingham facility, had it been built, would have employed almost 300 people.

It was in October 2004 that the Bush administration faced what it had termed a "crisis" over the lack of influenza vaccine available in the U.S. Now, the facility designed to address that shortage has been abandoned, just as the nation enters the 2008 influenza season.